There are few US presidential actions more sensitive, more fraught with peril, than when and where to use American military force.
If such information were obtained by American adversaries in advance, it could put lives – and national foreign policy objectives – at risk.
Fortunately for the Trump administration, a group chat with information about an impending US strike in Yemen among senior national security officials on the encrypted chat app Signal did not fall into the wrong hands.
Unfortunately for the Trump administration, the message thread was observed by an influential political journalist, Jeffrey Goldberg.
The Atlantic Magazine editor-in-chief, in an article posted on Monday on his publication’s website, says he appears to have been inadvertently added to the chat by White House National Security Adviser Michael Waltz.
Members of the group seemed to include Vice-President JD Vance, CIA Director John Ratcliffe, White House chief of staff Susie Wiles and Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth, among others.
A National Security Council spokesman told the BBC the text message thread “appears to be authentic”.
Goldberg says the group debated policy and discussed operational details about the impending US military strike – conversations that provided a rare near-real-time look at the inner workings of Trump’s senior national security team.
“Amazing job,” Waltz wrote to the group, just minutes after the US strikes on Houthi targets in Yemen took place on Saturday 15 March.
He followed up with emojis of a US flag, a fist and fire. Other senior officials joined in on the group congratulations.
These White House celebrations may prove short-lived after Monday’s revelations, however.
That an outsider could inadvertently be added to sensitive national defence conversations represents a stunning failure of operational security by the Trump administration.
And that these conversations were taking place outside of secure government channels designed for such sensitive communications could violate the Espionage Act, which sets rules for handling classified information.
“This administration is playing fast and loose with our nation’s most classified info, and it makes all Americans less safe,” Senator Mark Warner of Virginia, the ranking Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee, posted on X.
DISCLAIMER: The Views, Comments, Opinions, Contributions and Statements made by Readers and Contributors on this platform do not necessarily represent the views or policy of Multimedia Group Limited.